Chapter IV (1)

It was on the day succeeding this visit of reconciliation, that Miss Arabel and the stumpy Susannah pursued their way to the shrubbery walk, in a rapid and mysterious manner, as if they hoped to escape observation.

"Papa is so unreasonable, aunt," said the young lady. "Why should he wish to leave Surbridge, just when"----

"You think you have caught a lover," interposed the aunt; "don't be too sure. You've been deceived in that way before now."

"Oh, if you only saw him! He met me yesterday, and said he would see me again to-day; and paid such compliments, and looked so handsome."

"But who is he? Is he a gentleman?"

"Of course he is," replied Miss Arabel; "or do you think he would venture to speak to _me_?"

"Did he tell you his name?"

"No. All he has told me is--he is living with an old gentleman in one of the villas in the neighbourhood."

"An old gentleman," mused Miss Susannah, "in a villa--it must be the same--it must be old Roe's Grandson. If it is, and he takes a fancy to this girl, it will be all well yet. What has he ever called you? Did he ever say you were an angel?"

"No. He thought me one, though; and said he had heard of what a treasure Surbridge contained; and yesterday he repeated it, and said he would give the world to be able to call it his."

"That's something. You must get him to say something of the kind before a witness."

"But how? What witness can there be, when I can never bring him to the house?"

"Why not? Ah, how I recollect, in the back parlour," said Miss Susannah, her memory unconsciously wandering back to the love incidents of her youth.

"The back parlour?" enquired Miss Arabel.

"The back--I didn't say back parlour. I said black parlour--the oaken dining-room in my father's house."

"And what of it, aunt? What made you think of the black parlour now?"

"Oh, it was a picture," stammered Miss Susan, inventing an excuse for her mistake; "a beautiful old portrait--a sort of--I don't recollect what it was."

"Ah! that puts me in mind of what he speaks of often--the pictures in our house. I say, aunt," she continued, as if a thought had struck her.

"Well?"

"Suppose I were to invite him to come into the Hall and see the portraits?"

"Well, so you might. Your father would think he was as fond of drawing as you are; and if he be the person I think he is, your father will be delighted that you have made a friend of him."

"Indeed? Oh, I'm so happy! I'll ask him to the house this very day; and perhaps if he says anything, aunt, about the treasure, you can be in the way to hear it."

"That I will, and I'll bring your father, too. There's nothing like a father or brother in cases of the kind. If I had had a brother that would fight, I might have been married myself. Dear me, what an uncommon handsome young man in the avenue! I know him to be a lord by his walk."

Miss Arabel stretched her neck, and nearly strained her eyeballs in the effort to follow the direction of Susannah's eyes.

"That's he," she said; "go now, and leave me to get him into the house."

"He can't be any relation of Thomas Roe: he's too handsome for that," thought Miss Susannah; "but whoever he is, she'll be a lucky girl to catch him. My Sam was a foot or two taller, but very like him in every other respect--except the limp in the left leg."

As she turned back before entering the house, she saw the young people in full conversation in the shrubbery walk.

"Well, if he _is_ old Thomas Roe's grandson, and Arabel can hook him into a marriage, there will be no occasion to leave Surbridge Hall. Does the monster wish us to be tallow-chandlers again?"

On hurrying to the drawing-room to communicate to her nephew the fact that Mr Roe's heir was desperately in love with Arabel, she found Mr Gillingham Howard endeavouring to carry on a conversation with the very individual she most dreaded to see. Mr Roe had walked up, accompanied by Fanny Smith, to return the visit of the day before.

"This is so kind," said Miss Susannah, "and so friendly to bring your pretty grandchild. Our girls will be delighted to be her friends."

"Fanny's a good girl," replied the old man; "and you mustn't spoil her. Gus was just going to tell me if he had made up his mind, when you came in. You've thought of my offer, Gus?"

"Certainly; any thing you say shall always have my best consideration. As far as I am concerned, I could settle in Bucks, where I have a small estate, with satisfaction; but my girls are enthusiastically attached to this place. Arabel would break her heart if we took her away from Surbridge."

"I warrant her heart against all breakage and other damages, save and except the ordinary wear and tear--as Puff says in letting a furnished house; and, if it only depends on the young lady, I think I'll answer for her being more anxious for the arrangement than I am. But here's company coming, and I must have your answer before I go."

Mr Gillingham Howard heard the carriage stop at the door. He felt it was impossible to present so rough-mannered a man as Mr Roe to any of his friends without a certainty of exposure, and he was strongly tempted to agree to his demand at once, if he would immediately leave the house; but before he had time to arrange his thoughts, the door opened, and the Rayleighs of Borley Castle were announced.

Mr Gillingham Howard, by a great effort, received them with his usual courtesy.

"I have brought Mr Tinter with me," said Mrs Rayleigh, "and I hope you will let him see your family portraits. We have told him so much of them, that he is anxious to see them himself. He is writing a description of the private collections in the county."

Mr Tinter bowed; and Mr Gillingham Howard, with an imploring look to Mr Roe, who sat resting his chin upon his walking-stick, professed himself highly honoured by Mrs Rayleigh's request.

"I believe you have portraits of the Sidney family, sir," said Mr Tinter, "as I hear from Mrs Rayleigh--you are nearly related to them; I should like very much to compare them with the pictures at Penshurst."

"Oh! Mr Howard says the Penshurst pictures are only copies of his," said Mrs Rayleigh.

"Did I, madam? Did I say all?"

"If not all, you said most of them; and also, that you had some originals of those in your distant relation, the Duke of Norfolk's gallery."

Mr Gillingham Howard felt that Mr Roe's appalling eye was fixed upon him, though he did not venture to look in the direction of where he sat.

"Mr Tinter will tell you at once which are the copies. You can do that, Mr Tinter?"

"I can guess at the age of the picture, and the name of the painter, if he is a master," replied Mr Tinter.

"Oh! but Mr Howard has some pictures that Sir Thomas Lawrence said were the finest in Europe. Didn't he say so, Mr Howard?"

"Why, ma'am--I think--at least, so I understood him. Didn't Sir Thomas Lawrence praise some of my pictures, aunt?"

"I really don't remember," said Miss Susannah, looking more at Mr Roe than at her nephew.

"Oh, I thought you told us last time we dined here, that Sir Thomas stayed with you weeks at a time, and copied five or six of them himself."

"P'r'aps I knows more of them family portraits," said Mr Roe with a wilful exaggeration of accent and magnanimous contempt of grammar--"than e'er a one on ye."

All eyes were immediately directed to the old man. Mrs Rayleigh, who was a fine lady, and had never seen so queer a specimen of a critic as Mr Roe, was a little alarmed at his uncouth pronunciation. And Mr Gillingham Howard made a feeble and unsuccessful effort to deaden the effect of his remarks.

"My friend is a remarkably good judge of the fine arts, but quite a character. An amazing humourist, and very much given to quizzing. You'll hear what fun he'll make of us all."

"Who is he?" enquired Mrs Rayleigh, in the same confidential whisper.

"A person who has grown very rich in some sort of trade. He was a protegé of a relation of mine."

"And you bear with his eccentricities in hopes of his succession?"

"Exactly."

"I minds the getting of the whole lot on 'em. I can give you the birth, parentage, and edication, of every one on 'em."

"Of the pictures, sir?" enquired Mr Tinter, taking out his note-book. "I shall be delighted with any information."

"But where is the gallery, Mr Howard?" enquired Mrs Rayleigh.

"Why, madam, many of the pictures--in fact, all the best of them are in London at the cleaner's; but in the passage to the Conservatory there are some remaining, but the place is dark. I hope you'll rather look at them some other time."

"Now's the best," said Mr Roe, starting up. "Let's see the family picters, Gus."

Mr Howard was forced by the entreaties of all the party, and led the way to the passage where his pictures were hung, followed by Mrs Rayleigh and her two daughters, and Mr Tinter, Mr Roe, and Fanny, and Aunt Susannah.

"That seems a portrait of Queen Anne's time," said Mr Tinter, pointing to a much bewigged old gentleman in an antique frame. "Pray, what is its history?"

"Isn't that your grandfather's uncle, the general who won the battle of Ramillies against Marlborough's orders?" enquired Mrs Rayleigh. "Do tell Mr Tinter all about it."

"I reminds all about it," said Mr Roe, before the agonized Mr Howard could make any reply. "One of our agents failed, and we seized on his furniture, and old Bill Wilkins took this'n 'cause of the oak frame. He was a grocer in the Boro', and his name was--was--but I forgets his name."

"Who took the furniture?" asked Mr Tinter, "and who was a grocer in the Boro'?"

"The man as had that picter, and a sight more besides. There's one on 'em; the young 'oman a holding an orange in her hand, and a parrot on her shoulder."

"I thought that was the Saccharissa, Mr Howard, that had been in your family ever since the time of Waller."

"I told you he was a wag," said Mr Howard, in the last desperate struggle to avoid detection.

"But who is he? He is a very impudent old man to be so free."

"He is rich; the succession, you know," replied the gentleman with a forced laugh; but before he could mumble any thing more, the party turned round one of the corners of the passage, and heard voices in earnest talk.

"How can I refuse, when you tell me your happiness depends on it?" came distinctly to the ears of all, in the sharp clear tones of Miss Arabel.

"You are too good," replied a voice, which Fanny Smith immediately recognized as that of Charles. "You will make my whole family proud and happy when they hear you have consented."

"But won't you think I yield too soon; and without having asked papa's consent?"

"Ah--yes--I don't know how he will bear the loss of such a treasure. But he will reconcile himself to the want of it when he knows how happy it makes another in the possession. Say, when may I call it mine?"

"Oh, now--this moment--any time"--said Arabel, who had heard a noise in the passage, and concluded it was aunt Susannah enacting the part of a witness.

"Again I thank you!"--exclaimed Charles. "I will take it in my arms this instant, and carry it down the shrubbery walk to Mr Roe's."

"As you please--and wherever you like," said Arabel, throwing herself upon his shoulder. "I'm your's."

"Why, what in the name of wonder is all this here?" cried Mr Roe, hurrying on, and pouncing on the pair. "Are you making love to this here gal in the very presence of Fanny Smith?"

"I, sir?"--said Charles, astonished at his situation, and still supporting Miss Arabel, who pretended to be in a faint. "I asked this young lady to show me the picture of my father's mother; and, to my great delight, she said she would give it me; and, when I expressed my gratitude, she flung herself upon my shoulder, and said she would give me herself."

"And was it not me you meant by the treasure you talked of?" said Miss Arabel, starting up.

"No, madam. 'Twas my grandmother's portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds."

"Now, that's all right," said Mr Roe. "This young gentleman is the one I talked of, Gus--that I wants to buy this house for. I don't think your daughter will care to give it up to poor Charles that she took such a fancy to"----

"They seem attached, sir," replied Mr Howard. "And if they like to marry"----

"Bah!--he's to be married next week to my little grandchild, Fanny Smith, and we'll include the pictures in the purchase-money, for one of them is a portrait that was left by mistake when Bill Wilkins bought the hall, and he would never give it back to the real owners. But, now that Charles Walrond is to be my grandson, I'll take good care he recovers his grandmother's likeness. Come--shall I go on and give these ladies the facts of some of your other stories, or will you close with my terms at once?"

Mr Gillingham Howard did not take long to decide, and a very short time saw Surbridge Hall once more in the ancient line; and old Mr Roe, in relating the means he used to expel the vainglorious descendant of his partner, generally concluded with the moral, if not the words of Shakspeare--"Men's pleasant vices make whips to scourge them."

VANITIES IN VERSE.

BY B. SIMMONS.

LETTERS OF THE DEAD.

TO LIVIA.

I.

How few the moons since last, immersed
In thoughts of fev'rish, worldly care,
My casket's heap'd contents reversed,
I sought some scroll I wanted there;
How died at once abstraction's air--
How fix'd my frame, as by a spell,
When on THY lines, so slight, so fair,
My hurrying glance arrested fell!

II.

My soul that instant saw thee far
Sit in thy crown of bridal flowers,
And with Another watch the star
We watch'd in vanish'd vesper hours.
And as I paced the lonely room,
I wonder'd how that holy ray
Could with its light a world illume
So fill'd with falsehood and decay.

III.

Once more--above those slender lines
I bend me with suspended breath--
The hand that traced them now reclines
Clasp'd in th' unclosing hand of Death.
The worm hath made that brow its own
Where Love his wreath so lately set;
And in this heart survive alone
Forgiveness--pity--and regret.

IV.

'Twas 'mid the theatre's gay throng--
Life's loveliest colours round me spread--
That mid the pauses of a song,
I caught the careless "_She is dead!_"
The gaudy crowd--thy sudden grave--
I shrank in that contrasting shock,
Like midnight Listener by the wave,
When splits some bark upon the rock.

V.

This EARLY DEATH--within its pale
Sad air each angry feeling fades--
An evening haze, whose tender veil
The landscape's harsher features shades.
Ah, Scornful One--thy bier's white hue
Stole every earth-stain from thy cheek,
And left thee all to MEMORY'S view
That HOPE once dared in thee to seek.

1836.

PARTING PRECEPTS.

I.

How graceful was that Grecian creed
Which taught that tongues, of old,
Dwelt in the mountain and the mead,
And where the torrent roll'd,
And that in times of sacred fear,
With sweet mysterious moans,
They spoke aloud, while some pale Seer
Interpreted their tones.[21]

II.

And, LADY, why should we not deem
That in each echoing hill,
And sounding wood, and dancing stream,
A language lingers still?
No lovelier scenes round DELPHI spread
Than round thee stretch divine;
Nor Grecian maid bent brighter head
By haunted stream than thine.

III.

Then fancy thus that to thine ear,
While dies the autumn day,
The VOICES of THE WOODLANDS bear
This tributary lay.
Soft winds that steal from where the moon
Brightens the mountain spring,
Shall blend with Mulla's[22] distant tune,
And these the words they sing:--

1.

"Thou'st shared our thousand harmonies;
_At morn_ thy sleep we stirr'd
With sounds from many a balmy breeze,
And many a jocund bird;
And far from Us, when pleasure's lure
Around thy steps shall be,
Ah, keep thy soul as freshly pure
As We came pure to thee!

2.

"_At noon_, beneath September's heat,
Was it not sweet to feel,
Through shadowy grasses at thy feet,
Our silver waters steal?
Sparklingly clear, as now the truth
Seems in thy glance to glow;
So may, through worldly crowds, thy youth
A stainless current flow.

3.

"_At eve_, our hills for thee detain'd
The sun's departure bright.
He sank--how long our woods were stain'd
For thee with rosy light!
The worth, the warmth, the peace serene,
Thou'st known our vales among,
Say, shall they be reflected seen
Upon thy heart as long?

4.

"Morn, noon, and eve--bird, beam, and breeze,
Here blent to bless thy day;
May portion of their memories
Be ever round thy way!
Sweet waters for the weary Bark,
Through parching seas that sails;
Friends may grow false and fortune dark,
But NATURE never fails."

COLERIDGE AND OPIUM-EATING.[23]

What is the deadest of things earthly? It is, says the world, ever forward and rash--"a door-nail!" But the world is wrong. There is a thing deader than a door-nail, viz., Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I. Dead, more dead, most dead, is Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I.; and this upon more arguments than one. The book has clearly not completed its elementary act of respiration; the _systole_ of Vol. I. is absolutely useless and lost without the _diastole_ of that Vol. II., which is never to exist. That is one argument, and perhaps this second argument is stronger. Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I., deals rashly, unjustly, and almost maliciously, with some of our own particular friends; and yet, until late in this summer, _Anno Domini_ 1844, we--that is, neither ourselves nor our friends--ever heard of its existence. Now a sloth, even without the benefit of Mr Waterton's evidence to his character, will travel faster than that. But malice, which travels fastest of all things, must be dead and cold at starting, when it can thus have lingered in the rear for six years; and therefore, though the world was so far right, that people _do_ say, "Dead as a door-nail," yet, henceforwards, the weakest of these people will see the propriety of saying--"Dead as Gillman's Coleridge."

The reader of experience, on sliding over the surface of this opening paragraph, begins to think there's mischief singing in the upper air. No, reader--not at all. We never were cooler in our days. And this we protest, that, were it not for the excellence of the subject, _Coleridge and Opium-Eating_, Mr Gillman would have been dismissed by us unnoticed. Indeed, we not only forgive Mr Gillman, but we have a kindness for him; and on this account, that he was good, he was generous, he was most forbearing, through twenty years, to poor Coleridge, when thrown upon his hospitality. An excellent thing _that_, Mr Gillman, and one sufficient to blot out a world of libels on ourselves! But still, noticing the theme suggested by this unhappy Vol. I., we are forced at times to notice its author. Nor is this to be regretted. We remember a line of Horace never yet properly translated, viz:--

"Nec scuticâ dignum horribili sectêre flagello."

The true translation of which, as we assure the unlearned reader, is--"Nor must you pursue with the horrid knout of Christopher that man who merits only a switching." Very true. We protest against all attempts to invoke the exterminating knout; for _that_ sends a man to the hospital for two months; but you see that the same judicious poet, who dissuades an appeal to the knout, indirectly recommends the switch, which, indeed, is rather pleasant than otherwise, amiably playful in some of its little caprices, and in its worst, suggesting only a pennyworth of diachylon.

We begin by professing, with hearty sincerity, our fervent admiration of the extraordinary man who furnishes the theme for Mr Gillman's _coup-d'essai_ in biography. He was, in a literary sense, our brother--for he also was amongst the contributors to _Blackwood_--and will, we presume, take his station in that Blackwood gallery of portraits, which, in a century hence, will possess more interest for intellectual Europe than any merely martial series of portraits, or any gallery of statesmen assembled in congress, except as regards one or two leaders; for defunct major-generals, and secondary diplomatists, when their date is past, awake no more emotion than last year's advertisements, or obsolete directories; whereas those who, in a stormy age, have swept the harps of passion, of genial wit, or of the wrestling and gladiatorial reason, become more interesting to men when they can no longer be seen as bodily agents, than even in the middle chorus of that intellectual music over which, living, they presided.

Of this great camp Coleridge was a leader, and fought amongst the _primipili_; yet, comparatively, he is still unknown. Heavy, indeed, are the arrears still due to philosophic curiosity on the real merits, and on the separate merits, of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge as a poet--Coleridge as a philosopher! How extensive are those questions, if those were all! and upon neither question have we yet any investigation--such as, by compass of views, by research, or even by earnestness of sympathy with the subject, can, or ought to satisfy, a philosophic demand. Blind is that man who can persuade himself that the interest in Coleridge, taken as a total object, is becoming an obsolete interest. We are of opinion that even Milton, now viewed from a distance of two centuries, is still inadequately judged or appreciated in his character of poet, of patriot and partisan, or, finally, in his character of accomplished scholar. But, if so, how much less can it be pretended that satisfaction has been rendered to the claims of Coleridge? for, upon Milton, libraries have been written. There has been time for the malice of men, for the jealousy of men, for the enthusiasm, the scepticism, the adoring admiration of men, to expand themselves! There has been room for a Bentley, for an Addison, for a Johnson, for a wicked Lauder, for an avenging Douglas, for an idolizing Chateaubriand; and yet, after all, little enough has been done towards any comprehensive estimate of the mighty being concerned. Piles of materials have been gathered to the ground; but, for the monument which should have risen from these materials, neither the first stone has been laid, nor has a qualified architect yet presented his credentials. On the other hand, upon Coleridge little, comparatively, has yet been written, whilst the separate characters on which the judgment is awaited, are more by one than those which Milton sustained. Coleridge, also, is a poet; Coleridge, also, was mixed up with the fervent politics of his age--an age how memorably reflecting the revolutionary agitations of Milton's age ________ridge, also, was an extensive and brilliant scholar. Whatever might be the separate proportions of the two men in each particular department of the three here noticed, think as the reader will upon that point, sure we are that either subject is ample enough to make a strain upon the amplest faculties. How alarming, therefore, for any _honest_ critic, who should undertake this later subject of Coleridge, to recollect that, after pursuing him through a zodiac of splendours corresponding to those of Milton in kind, however different in degree--after weighing him as a poet, as a philosophic politician, as a scholar, he will have to wheel after him into another orbit, into the unfathomable _nimbus_ of transcendental metaphysics. Weigh him the critic must in the golden balance of philosophy the most abstruse--a balance which even itself requires weighing previously, or he will have done nothing that can be received for an estimate of the composite Coleridge. This astonishing man, be it again remembered, besides being an exquisite poet, a profound political speculator, a philosophic student of literature through all its chambers and recesses, was also a circumnavigator on the most pathless waters of scholasticism and metaphysics. He had sounded, without guiding charts, the secret deeps of Proclus and Plotinus; he had laid down buoys on the twilight, or moonlight, ocean of Jacob Boehmen;[24] he had cruised over the broad Atlantic of Kant and Schelling, of Fichte and Oken. Where is the man who shall be equal to these things?

We at least make no such adventurous effort; or, if ever we should presume to do so, not at present. Here we design only to make a coasting voyage of survey round the headlands and most conspicuous sea-marks of our subject, as they are brought forward by Mr Gillman, or collaterally suggested by our own reflections; and especially we wish to say a word or two on Coleridge as an opium-eater.

Naturally the first point to which we direct our attention, is the history and personal relations of Coleridge. Living with Mr Gillman for nineteen years as a domesticated friend, Coleridge ought to have been known intimately. And it is reasonable to expect, from so much intercourse, some additions to our slender knowledge of Coleridge's adventures, (if we may use so coarse a word,) and of the secret springs at work in those early struggles of Coleridge at Cambridge, London, Bristol, which have been rudely told to the world, and repeatedly told, as showy romances, but never rationally explained.

The anecdotes, however, which Mr Gillman has added to the personal history of Coleridge, are as little advantageous to the effect of his own book as they are to the interest of the memorable character which he seeks to illustrate. Always they are told without grace, and generally are suspicious in their details. Mr Gillman we believe to be too upright a man for countenancing any untruth. He has been deceived. For example, will any man believe this? A certain "excellent equestrian" falling in with Coleridge on horseback, thus accosted him--"Pray, sir, did you meet a tailor along the road?" "_A tailor_!" answered Coleridge; "_I did meet a person answering such a description, who told me he had dropped his goose; that if I rode a little further I should find it; and I guess he must have meant you_." In Joe Miller this story would read, perhaps, sufferably. Joe has a privilege; and we do not look too narrowly into the mouth of a Joe-Millerism. But Mr Gillman, writing the life of a philosopher, and no jest-book, is under a different law of decorum. That retort, however, which silences the jester, it may seem, must be a good one. And we are desired to believe that, in this case, the baffled assailant rode off in a spirit of benign candour, saying aloud to himself, like the excellent philosopher the he evidently was, "Caught a Tartar!"

But another story of a sporting baronet, who was besides a Member of Parliament, is much worse, and altogether degrading to Coleridge. This gentleman, by way of showing off before a party of ladies, is represented as insulting Coleridge by putting questions to him on the qualities of his horse, so as to draw the animal's miserable defects into public notice, and then closing his display by demanding what he would take for the horse "including the rider." The supposed reply of Coleridge might seem good to those who understand nothing of true dignity; for, as an _impromptu_, it was smart and even caustic. The baronet, it seems, was reputed to have been bought by the minister; and the reader will at once divine that the retort took advantage of that current belief, so as to throw back the sarcasm, by proclaiming that neither horse nor rider had a price placarded in the market at which any man could become their purchaser. But this was not the temper in which Coleridge either did reply, or could have replied. Coleridge showed, in the _spirit_ of his manner a profound sensibility to the nature of gentleman; and he felt too justly what it became a self-respecting person to say, ever to have aped the sort of flashy fencing which might seem fine to a theatrical blood.

Another story is self-refuted: "a hired partisan" had come to one of Coleridge's political lectures with the express purpose of bringing the lecturer into trouble; and most preposterously he laid himself open to his own snare by refusing to pay for admission. Spies must be poor artists who proceed thus. Upon which Coleridge remarked--"That, before the gentleman kicked up a dust, surely he would down with the dust." So far the story will not do. But what follows is possible enough. The _same_ "hired" gentleman, by way of giving unity to the tale, is described as having hissed. Upon this a cry arose of "turn him out!" But Coleridge interfered to protect him; he insisted on the man's right to hiss if he thought fit; it was legal to hiss; it was natural to hiss; "for what is to be expected, gentlemen, when the cool waters of reason come in contact with red-hot aristocracy, but a hiss?" _Euge!_

Amongst all the anecdotes, however, of this splendid man, often trivial, often incoherent, often unauthenticated, there is one which strikes us as both true and interesting; and we are grateful to Mr Gillman for preserving it. We find it introduced, and partially authenticated, by the following sentence from Coleridge himself:--"From eight to fourteen I was a playless day-dreamer, a _helluo librorum_; my appetite for which was indulged by a singular incident. A stranger, who was struck by my conversation, made me free of a circulating library in King's Street, Cheapside." The more circumstantial explanation of Mr Gillman is this: "The incident indeed was singular. Going down the Strand, in one of his day-dreams, fancying himself swimming across the Hellespont, thrusting his hands before him as in the act of swimming, his hand came in contact with a gentleman's pocket. The gentleman seized his hand, turning round, and looking at him with some anger--'What! so young, and yet so wicked?' at the same time accused him of an attempt to pick his pocket. The frightened boy sobbed out his denial of the intention, and explained to him how he thought himself Leander swimming across the Hellespont. The gentleman was so struck and delighted with the novelty of the thing, and with the simplicity and intelligence of the boy, that he subscribed, as before stated, to the library; in consequence of which Coleridge was further enabled to indulge his love of reading."

We fear that this slovenly narrative is the very perfection of bad story-telling. But the story itself is striking, and, by the very oddness of the incidents, not likely to have been invented. The effect, from the position of the two parties--on the one side, a simple child from Devonshire, dreaming in the Strand that he was swimming over from Sestos to Abydos, and, on the other, the experienced man, dreaming only of this world, its knaves and its thieves, but still kind and generous--is beautiful and picturesque. _Oh! si sic omnia_!

But the most interesting to us of the _personalities_ connected with Coleridge are his feuds and his personal dislikes. Incomprehensible to us is the war of extermination which Coleridge made upon the political economists. Did Sir James Steuart, in speaking of vine-dressers, (not _as_ vine-dressers, but generally as cultivators,) tell his readers, that, if such a man simply replaced his own consumption, having no surplus whatever or increment for the public capital, he could not be considered a useful citizen? Not the beast in the Revelation is held up by Coleridge as more hateful to the spirit of truth than the Jacobite baronet. And yet we know of an author--viz. one S.T. Coleridge--who repeated that same doctrine without finding any evil in it. Look at the first part of the _Wallenstein_, where Count Isolani having said, "Pooh! we are _all_ his subjects," _i. e._ soldiers, (though unproductive labourers,) not less than productive peasants, the emperor's envoy replies--"Yet with a difference, general;" and the difference implies Sir James's scale, his vine-dresser being the equatorial case between the two extremes of the envoy.--Malthus again, in his population-book, contends for a mathematic difference between animal and vegetable life, in respect to the law of increase, as though the first increased by geometrical ratios, the last by arithmetical! No proposition more worthy of laughter; since both, when permitted to expand, increase by geometrical ratios, and the latter by much higher ratios. Whereas, Malthus persuaded himself of his crotchet simply by refusing the requisite condition in the vegetable case, and granting it in the other. If you take a few grains of wheat, and are required to plant all successive generations of their produce in the same flower-pot for ever, of course you neutralise its expansion by your own act of arbitrary limitation.[25] But so you would do, if you tried the case of _animal_ increase by still exterminating all but one replacing couple of parents. This is not to try, but merely a pretence of trying, one order of powers against another. That was folly. But Coleridge combated this idea in a manner so obscure, that nobody understood it. And leaving these speculative conundrums, in coming to the great practical interests afloat in the Poor Laws, Coleridge did so little real work, that he left, as a _res integra_, to Dr Alison, the capital argument that legal and _adequate_ provision for the poor, whether impotent poor or poor accidentally out of work, does not extend pauperism--no, but is the one great resource for putting it down. Dr Alison's overwhelming and _experimental_ manifestations of that truth have prostrated Malthus and his generation for ever. This comes of not attending to the Latin maxim--"_Hoc_ age"--mind the object before you. Dr Alison, a wise man, "_hoc_ egit:" Coleridge "_aliud_ egit." And we see the result. In a case which suited him, by interesting his peculiar feeling, Coleridge could command

"Attention full ten times as much as there needs."

But search documents, value evidence, or thresh out bushels of statistical tables, Coleridge could not, any more than he could ride with Elliot's dragoons.

Another instance of Coleridge's inaptitude for such studies as political economy is found in his fancy, by no means "rich and rare," but meagre and trite, that taxes can never injure public prosperity by mere excess of quantity; if they injure, we are to conclude that it must be by their quality and mode of operation, or by their false appropriation, (as, for instance, if they are sent out of the country and spent abroad.) Because, says Coleridge, if the taxes are exhaled from the country as vapors, back they come in drenching showers. Twenty pounds ascend in a Scotch mist to the Chancellor of the Exchequer from Leeds; but does it evaporate? Not at all: By return of post down comes an order for twenty pounds' worth of Leeds cloth, on account of Government, seeing that the poor men of the ----th regiment want new gaiters. True; but of this return twenty pounds, not more than four will be profit, _i. e._, surplus accruing to the public capital; whereas, of the original twenty pounds, every shilling was surplus. The same unsound fancy has been many times brought forward; often in England, often in France. But it is curious, that its first appearance upon any stage was precisely two centuries ago, when as yet political economy slept with the pre-Adamites, viz. in the Long Parliament. In a quarto volume of the debates during 1644-5, printed as an independent work, will be found the same identical doctrine, supported very sonorously by the same little love of an illustration from the see-saw of mist and rain.

Political economy was not Coleridge's forte. In politics he was happier. In mere personal politics, he (like every man when reviewed from a station distant by forty years) will often appear to have erred; nay, he will be detected and nailed in error. But this is the necessity of us all. Keen are the refutations of time. And absolute results to posterity are the fatal touchstone of opinions in the past. It is undeniable, besides, that Coleridge had strong personal antipathies, for instance, to Messrs Pitt and Dundas. Yet _why_, we never could understand. We once heard him tell a story upon Windermere, to the late Mr Curwen, then M.P. for Workington, which was meant, apparently, to account for this feeling. The story amounted to this: that, when a freshman at Cambridge, Mr Pitt had wantonly amused himself at a dinner party in Trinity, in smashing with filberts (discharged in showers like grape-shot) a most costly dessert set of cut glass, from which Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued a principle of destructiveness in his _cerebellum_. Now, if this dessert set belonged to some poor suffering Trinitarian, and not to himself, we are of opinion that he was faulty, and ought, upon his own great subsequent maxim, to have been coerced into "indemnity for the past, and security for the future." But, besides that this glassy _mythus_ belongs to an æra fifteen years earlier than Coleridge's, so as to justify a shadow of scepticism, we really cannot find, in such an _escapade_ under the boiling blood of youth, any sufficient justification of that withering malignity towards the name of Pitt, which runs through Coleridge's famous _Fire, Famine, and Slaughter_. As this little viperous _jeu-d'esprit_ (published anonymously) subsequently became the subject of a celebrated after-dinner discussion in London, at which Coleridge (_comme de raison_) was the chief speaker, the reader of this generation may wish to know the question at issue; and in order to judge of _that_, he must know the outline of this devil's squib. The writer brings upon the scene three pleasant young ladies, viz. Miss Fire, Miss Famine, and Miss Slaughter. "What are you up to? What's the row?"--we may suppose to be the introductory question of the poet. And the answer of the ladies makes us aware that they are fresh from larking in Ireland, and in France. A glorious spree they had; lots of fun; and laughter _à discretion_. At all times _gratus puellæ risus ab angulo_; so that we listen to their little gossip with interest. They had been setting men, it seems, by the ears; and the drollest little atrocities they do certainly report. Not but we have seen better in the Nenagh paper, so far as Ireland is concerned. But the pet little joke was in La Vendée. Miss Famine, who is the girl for our money, raises the question--whether any of them can tell the name of the leader and prompter to these high jinks of hell--if so, let her whisper it.

"Whisper it, sister, so and so,
In a dark hint--distinct and low."

Upon which the playful Miss Slaughter replies:--

"Letters _four_ do form his name.
* * * *
He came by stealth and unlock'd my den;
And I have drunk the blood since then
Of thrice three hundred thousand men."

Good: But the sting of the hornet lies in the conclusion. If this quadril_i_teral man had done so much for _them_, (though really, we think, 6s. 8d. might have settled his claim,) what, says Fire, setting her arms a-kimbo, would they do for _him_? Slaughter replies, rather crustily, that, as far as a good kicking would go--or (says Famine) a little matter of tearing to pieces by the mob--they would be glad to take tickets at his benefit. "How, you bitches!" says Fire, "is that all?

"I alone am faithful; I
_Cling to him everlastingly_."

The sentiment is diabolical. And the question argued at the London dinner-table was--Could the writer have been other than a devil? The dinner was at the late excellent Mr Sotheby's, known advantageously in those days as the translator of Wieland's _Oberon_. Several of the great guns amongst the literary body were present; in particular, Sir Walter Scott; and he, we believe, with his usual good-nature, took the apologetic side of the dispute. In fact, he was in the secret. Nobody else, barring the author, knew at first whose good name was at stake. The scene must have been high. The company kicked about the poor diabolic writer's head as if it had been a tennis-ball. Coleridge, the yet unknown criminal, absolutely perspired and fumed in pleading for the defendant; the company demurred; the orator grew urgent; wits began to _smoke_ the case, as active verbs; the advocate to _smoke_, as a neuter verb; the "fun grew fast and furious;" until at length _delinquent arose_, burning tears in his eyes, and confessed to an audience, (now bursting with stifled laughter, but whom he supposed to be bursting with fiery indignation,) "Lo! I am he that wrote it."

For our own parts, we side with Coleridge. Malice is not always of the heart. There is a malice of the understanding and the fancy. Neither do we think the worse of a man for having invented the most horrible and old-woman-troubling curse that demons ever listened to. We are too apt to swear horribly ourselves; and often have we frightened the cat, to say nothing of the kettle, by our shocking [far too shocking!] oaths.

There were other celebrated men whom Coleridge detested, or seemed to detest--Paley, Sir Sidney Smith, Lord Hutchinson, (the last Lord Donoughmore,) and Cuvier. To Paley it might seem as if his antipathy had been purely philosophic; but we believe that partly it was personal; and it tallies with this belief, that, in his earliest political tracts, Coleridge charged the archdeacon repeatedly with his own joke, as if it had been a serious saying, viz.--"that he could not afford to keep a conscience;" such luxuries, like a carriage, for instance, being obviously beyond the finances of poor men.

With respect to the philosophic question between the parties, as to the grounds of moral election, we hope it is no treason to suggest that both were perhaps in error. Against Paley, it occurs at once that he himself would not have made consequences the _practical_ test in valuing the morality of an act, since these can very seldom be traced at all up to the final stages, and in the earliest stages are exceedingly different under different circumstances; so that the same act, tried by its consequences, would bear a fluctuating appreciation. This could not have been Paley's _revised_ meaning. Consequently, had he been pressed by opposition, it would have come out, that by _test_ he meant only _speculative_ test: a very harmless doctrine certainly, but useless and impertinent to any purpose of his system. The reader may catch our meaning in the following illustration. It is a matter of general belief, that happiness, upon the whole, follows in a higher degree from constant integrity, than from the closest attention to self-interest. Now happiness is one of those consequences which Paley meant by final or remotest. But we could never use this idea as an exponent of integrity, or interchangeable criterion, because happiness cannot be ascertained or appreciated except upon long tracts of time, whereas the particular act of integrity depends continually upon the election of the moment. No man, therefore, could venture to lay down as a rule, Do what makes you happy; use this as your test of actions, satisfied that in that case always you will do the thing which is right. For he cannot discern independently what _will_ make him happy; and he must decide on the spot. The use of the _nexus_ between morality and happiness must therefore be inverted; it is not practical or prospective, but simply retrospective; and in that form it says no more than the good old rules hallowed in every cottage. But this furnishes no practical guide for moral election which a man had not, before he ever thought of this _nexus_. In the sense in which it is true, we need not go to the professor's chair for this maxim; in the sense in which it would serve Paley, it is absolutely false.

On the other hand, as against Coleridge, it is certain that many acts could be mentioned which are judged to be good or bad only because their consequences are known to be so, whilst the great catholic acts of life are entirely (and, if we may so phrase it, haughtily) independent of consequences. For instance, fidelity to a trust is a law of immutable morality subject to no casuistry whatever. You have been left executor to a friend--you are to pay over his last legacy to X, though a dissolute scoundrel; and you are to give no shilling of it to the poor brother of X, though a good man, and a wise man, struggling with adversity. You are absolutely excluded from all contemplation of results. It was your deceased friend's right to make the will; it is yours simply to see it executed. Now, in opposition to this primary class of actions stands another, such as the habit of intoxication, which are known to be wrong only by observing the consequences. If drunkenness did not terminate, after some years, in producing bodily weakness, irritability in the temper, and so forth, it would _not_ be a vicious act. And accordingly, if a transcendent motive should arise in favour of drunkenness, as that it would enable you to face a degree of cold, or contagion, else menacing to life, a duty would arise, _pro hâc vice_, of getting drunk. We had an amiable friend who suffered under the infirmity of cowardice; an awful coward he was when sober; but, when very drunk, he had courage enough for the Seven Champions of Christendom. Therefore, in an emergency, where he knew himself suddenly loaded with the responsibility of defending a family, we approved highly of his getting drunk. But to violate a trust could never become right under any change of circumstances. Coleridge, however, altogether overlooked this distinction; which, on the other hand, stirring in Paley's mind, but never brought out to distinct consciousness, nor ever investigated, nor limited, has undermined his system. Perhaps it is not very important how a man _theorizes_ upon morality; happily for us all, God has left no man in such questions practically to the guidance of his understanding; but still, considering that academic bodies _are_ partly instituted for the support of speculative truth as well as truth practical, we must think it a blot upon the splendour of Oxford and Cambridge that both of them, in a Christian land, make Paley the foundation of their ethics; the alternative being Aristotle. And, in our mind, though far inferior as a moralist to the Stoics, Aristotle is often less a pagan than Paley.

Coleridge's dislike to Sir Sidney Smith and the Egyptian Lord Hutchinson fell under the category of Martial's case.

"Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare,
Hoc solum novi--non amo te, Sabidi."

Against Lord Hutchinson, we never heard him plead any thing of moment, except that he was finically Frenchified in his diction; of which he gave this instance--that having occasion to notice a brick wall, (which was literally _that_, not more and not less,) when reconnoitring the French defences, he called it a _revêtement_. And we ourselves remember his using the French word _gloriole_ rather ostentatiously; that is, when no particular emphasis attached to the case. But every man has his foibles; and few, perhaps, are less conspicuously annoying than this of Lord Hutchinson's. Sir Sidney's crimes were less distinctly revealed to our mind. As to Cuvier, Coleridge's hatred of _him_ was more to our taste; for (though quite unreasonable, we fear) it took the shape of patriotism. He insisted on it, that our British John Hunter was the genuine article, and that Cuvier was a humbug. Now, speaking privately to the public, we cannot go quite so far as _that_. But, when publicly we address that most respectable character, _en grand costume_, we always mean to back Coleridge. For we are a horrible John Bull ourselves. As Joseph Hume observes, it makes no difference to us--right or wrong, black or white--when our countrymen are concerned. And John Hunter, notwithstanding he had a bee in his bonnet,[26] was really a great man; though it will not follow that Cuvier must, therefore, have been a little one. We do not pretend to be acquainted with the tenth part of Cuvier's performances; but we suspect that Coleridge's range in that respect was not much greater than our own.

Other cases of monomaniac antipathy we might revive from our recollections of Coleridge, had we a sufficient motive. But in compensation, and by way of redressing the balance, he had many strange likings--equally monomaniac--and, unaccountably, he chose to exhibit his whimsical partialities by dressing up, as it were, in his own clothes, such a set of scarecrows as eye has not beheld. Heavens! what an ark of unclean beasts would have been Coleridge's private _menagerie_ of departed philosophers, could they all have been trotted out in succession! But did the reader feel them to be the awful bores which, in fact, they were? No; because Coleridge had blown upon these withered anatomies, through the blowpipe of his own creative genius, a stream of gas that swelled the tissue of their antediluvian wrinkles, forced colour upon their cheeks, and splendour upon their sodden eyes. Such a process of ventriloquism never _has_ existed. He spoke by their organs. They were the tubes; and he forced through their wooden machinery his own Beethoven harmonies.

First came Dr Andrew Bell. We knew him. Was he dull? Is a wooden spoon dull? Fishy were his eyes; torpedinous was his manner; and his main idea, out of two which he really had, related to the moon--from which you infer, perhaps, that he was lunatic. By no means. It was no craze, under the influence of the moon, which possessed him; it was an idea of mere hostility to the moon. The Madras people, like many others, had an idea that she influenced the weather. Subsequently the Herschels, senior and junior, systematized this idea; and then the wrath of Andrew, previously in a crescent state, actually dilated to a plenilunar orb. The Westmoreland people (for at the lakes it was we knew him) expounded his condition to us by saying that he was "maffled;" which word means "perplexed in the extreme." His wrath did not pass into lunacy; it produced simple distraction; an uneasy fumbling with the idea; like that of an old superannuated dog who longs to worry, but cannot for want of teeth. In this condition you will judge that he was rather tedious. And in this condition Coleridge took him up. Andrew's other idea, because he _had_ two, related to education. Perhaps six-sevenths of that also came from Madras. No matter, Coleridge took _that_ up; Southey also; but Southey with his usual temperate fervour. Coleridge, on the other hand, found celestial marvels both in the scheme and in the man. Then commenced the apotheosis of Andrew Bell; and because it happened that his opponent, Lancaster, between ourselves, really _had_ stolen his ideas from Bell, what between the sad wickedness of Lancaster and the celestial transfiguration of Bell, gradually Coleridge heated himself to such an extent, that people, when referring to that subject, asked each other: "Have you heard Coleridge lecture on _Bel and the Dragon_?"

The next man glorified by Coleridge was John Woolman, the Quaker. Him, though we once possessed his works, it cannot be truly affirmed that we ever read. Try to read John, we often did; but read John we did not. This however, you say, might be our fault, and not John's. Very likely. And we have a notion that now, with our wiser thoughts, we _should_ read John, if he were here on this table. It is certain that he was a good man, and one of the earliest in America, if not in Christendom, who lifted up his hand to protest against the slave-trade. But still, we suspect, that had John been all that Coleridge represented, he would not have repelled us from reading his travels in the fearful way that he did. But, again, we beg pardon, and entreat the earth of Virginia to lie light upon the remains of John Woolman; for he was an Israelite, indeed, in whom there was no guile.